


Piercing Blue

by Deannie



Category: The Sentinel
Genre: Episode:s01e05 Cypher, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-04
Updated: 2013-11-04
Packaged: 2017-12-31 12:00:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,015
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1031491
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deannie/pseuds/Deannie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Blair has a little secret something to remember Jim by. It's less secret after Lash gets through with him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Piercing Blue

Blair Sandburg stood uncomfortably in the front room, waiting to be waited on, as technopop played loudly from the stereo speakers hidden around the office, giving the customers something to focus one while they sat in the old barber's chairs...

The display cases around him held a myriad of jewelry: nipple rings, and earrings, and noserings... and rings for areas that were best not thought about too closely.

The anthropology student stepped forward as a short, compact young man walked up to the desk before him. The man was swarthy, and he spoke with a quiet, soothing Pakistani accent. "Come with me," the man said simply, turning to walk toward one of the purple-curtained areas beyond the foyer.

Blair sat in the beat-up old chair, feeling like he was waiting for the dentist, and smiled tensely as the man indicated that he should take off his shirt. A well-used plastic caliper came out, and Blair gasped in nervousness as the man teased his left nipple into an erect position, fitting the caliper to the tight little bud.

"I'm Tony," the man said quietly, as if he felt the need to introduce himself after such a personal act.

"Blair," the grad student returned pleasantly, pulling his shirt back on as they walked back to the display cases up front. Tony pulled out a box full of beads, and tossed a stainless steel ring on the glass-topped case.

Blair looked through the beads carefully, picking one that was a piercing ( _Oh, way to go, Blair,_ he whispered to himself. _Nice pun!_ ) blue that reminded him again of his reason for being here. Tony nodded silently, and led the way back to the purple curtains, cradling Blair's new acquisitions in his hand.

Anthropology taught you a lot about people's motivations, Blair had decided long ago--long before his current project started. Piercing was seen in modern America as anything from a sexual experience to a base form of self-mutilation. He'd read all the treatises on why people pierced, but the only thing he knew for certain was that these brief forays into pain, and the silver rings they left behind, had always seemed to be a fitting commemoration for the true wonders in his life.

He held Detective Ellison's face firmly in his mind as Tony fixed a tight clamp to his nipple, the pressure causing him to draw in a tense breath. This was the easiest of the steps, he knew, but this piercing was too special to worry about the pain to come...

"Okay, Blair," Tony said, his soft, lilting voice giving the other man something to concentrate on. "Now, there is going to be a little pain now."

A thin, straight needle slipped through his bud, and Blair conjured up Jim Ellison's crooked smile.

"And a little more," Tony added.

A hollow needle--high bore and sharp as hell--slipped through him, couching the smaller needle in its shaft, and Blair breathed deeply, his mind focussing on the almost sweet way Jim Ellison had told Captain Taggart that Blair was to be his new partner.

"Okay, Blair, that's all the pain, now." Tony told him, not at all surprised to see the smile that had broken out on the anthropologist's face. People liked the pain--but they liked the end of it better.

The ring was slipped in expertly, the Ellison-eyed bead fastened with care, and Blair watched as the swarthy young man bandaged the slightly weeping nipple.

Tony told him all the things he needed to do to guard against infection, and Blair paid him happily, walking out into a cool evening with his newest price fastened firmly to his breast.

 

A drink was in order at this point, so Blair drove quickly to his warehouse apartment and slid inside, heading for the refrigerator.

As he sat with his beer, one hand lightly resting on his newest piercing, Blair found himself smiling.

Jim Ellison was perfect! It was more than the man's incredible--if totally out of whack--senses... The man was just... perfect. Blair's mind returned to the planes of Jim's face, and he found himself sighing as his eyes closed, to be rewarded with a detailed map of the firm jaw, the restrained smile, the piercing blue eyes whose image Blair now wore on his chest.

He chuckled at his own whimsy, reaching up to finger the two rings in his ear. They had been commemorations as well. Ginny. She'd been his first love when he entered college. Sixteen and oh-so-young, Blair Sandburg had had a hard time fitting in at first. But Ginny had helped him through, and her loving had been his first, and definitely his most tender. It had taken him a year to commemorate her with the earring. And he'd never told her why he'd gotten it.

That was part of the game. They never needed to know that you were marking yourself as theirs. They just saw the mark, and assumed it was decoration.

And of course, they were right, he thought as he finished his beer. It _was_ decoration.

They just never realized that he was decorating himself with them.

The second commemoration had been for Mark. His first male lover. That had taken six months to decide on, and Blair had been surprised that it had actually turned the slightly older student on. There were some intense perks to this kind of commemoration--Blair had simply never thought of hot sex as one of them.

And it wouldn't be. Not this time. Ellison was pretty straight by the looks of him. And it didn't matter anyway. The Sentinel would never see this mark--which was the point of it. It was a little piece of the detective that Blair could carry forever, with the object of his obsession never the wiser.

Why he had only waited six weeks after meeting Jim Ellison to commemorate the Sentinel's place in his life, Blair didn't really know. He just knew that Jim was special--more special than the lovers who had meant so much to him before. Jim would never be a lover, Blair knew. It just wasn't in the cards. But maybe Jim would be something incredibly different and incredibly intense...

 _Time will tell,_ he thought, grinning again and pulling himself off the couch, dumping his beer bottle in the recycling bin before heading for his bed. As he stripped, he lightly fingered the observer's badge that was clipped to the front pocket of his pants.

A police observer...

 _Jim's_ observer.

God, he loved the sound of that!

* * *

**_Two months later..._ **

"Sandburg?" Jim slammed the bolt cutters home again, watching in satisfaction as the last of his partner's shackles fell away. The kid still wasn't aware, and it was starting to scare the detective. "Sandburg? Come on, Blair." He slapped lightly at his partner's cheek. "Come on."

He was surprised by the sudden uptake in Sandburg's heartbeat, and wasn't quite prepared for the fist that tried vainly to connect with his head. He took Blair's hands in one of his own, and spoke soothingly. "It's okay, Blair," he whispered. "It's okay, it's okay..."

But it didn't seem to be. Blair thrashed suddenly, neatly dislodging himself from the old barber's chair, and ending up crouched tensely on the ground. His eyes were open now, but Jim could see the vagueness of the drug still in them. He knew that Lash didn't use much of it, but it must have been enough to terrify the younger man.

"Blair," he said quietly, hearing sirens in the near distance, and holding out his hand in support. "Come on, man... It's okay. Lash's dead."

That, mixed with the sirens that Blair could now clearly hear, seemed to be enough to at least relax the kid.

Unfortunately, as soon as he relaxed, the mixture of spent adrenaline and the drug in his system were enough to drop him. Jim rushed forward, calming down immediately as he heard Blair's deep, strong heartbeat.

Jim could hear the commotion coming from downstairs, and knew he should head down there and explain this all to Simon. But he didn't want to leave Sandburg here, and he had no idea of how much drug had been introduced into the kid's system.

Carolyn had said that Lash's victims were only "subdued" by the concoction, but Blair looked to be a good deal more out of it than that. Jim couldn't leave the kid just now--not when he was likely to go off the deep end again as soon as he regained consciousness.

The detective settled for shouting for his captain, wishing that his fall down three stories to the warehouse floor hadn't destroyed his com unit. Simon heard him, and Jim called for the medteam to join him on the third floor.

Blair was starting to mutter and fuss now, and Jim placed a calming hand on his forehead--which immediately set the kid off again.

" _Don't!_ "

Sandburg's voice was rough, and he seemed to grunt in pain as he backed away from Jim's hand.

"It's okay, buddy," Jim whispered quietly, remembering the shambles that his loft had been in when he'd arrived there this evening. It had to have been one hell of a fight for that to happen, which meant that Sandburg was probably suffering from a lot more than just the drug.

He moved closer, one hand going out to placate the wild-eyed anthropologist. "Blair, come on, buddy. It's Jim..."

Sandburg slumped down in a daze, vague eyes searching the other man's face. "Jim?" he asked weakly.

"Yeah, Chief. It's me."

"I'm sorry, Jim," Blair whispered, a hand going up to his chest as he hissed again in pain. "I messed up, man."

"No you didn't, Chief," Jim assured him, moving closer. "You did everything right."

"I did?" Sandburg asked blearily, as if sure he'd heard his partner wrong.

"Absolutely."

A look of relief flashed across the slightly bruised face before him, and the detective hissed as Sandburg dropped heavily the rest of the way to the ground.

Something in Jim snapped, and he moved forward swiftly, turning his head to bellow. "Damnit, Simon! Where the hell is that medteam!?"

Carolyn was suddenly at the top of the stairs, negotiating the broken steps, and dropping down beside her distraught ex-husband. "It's okay, Jimmy," she murmured soothingly, as the small medteam came down the steps behind them. "We've got it."

Jim nodded dully and pushed himself back, as Carolyn began looking over his partner. She commented to one of the medteam about the reassuring strength of Blair's pulse and respiration. Jim could have told her that himself. He'd been focused on the kid's vitals since he'd first found this hideout with his hearing.

"Oh, man..."

Jim looked up sharply at Brown's exclamation, and found Carolyn lifting the kid's shirt to reveal a series of mottled, fist-sized bruises that decorated the slightly furry abdomen and chest. He dimly caught glimpse of a flash of blue and silver at one battered nipple, the ring surrounded by smears of dried blood. He didn't recognise what he was seeing then, but it would come back to him later...

* * *

Many things would have to come back to him later, he realized, as Carolyn helped him maneuver the still-dazed anthropologist up to his loft, sometime farther on into the long night.

Blair had been at least semi-conscious most of the time, after that first scare, and he stumbled along quietly, letting someone else think for now. He was obviously sore, and still pretty disoriented, but, regardless of the fact that he seemed to have more of the sedative in his system than they had assumed the other victims had, the medteam hadn't felt the need to send him to the hospital.

"It'll wear off, Jimmy," Carolyn had assured her ex as they drove from the crime scene. "If he's not back to normal tomorrow morning, you should probably get him checked out, but he's freaked enough without the prospect of waking up in the hospital."

 _Or the prospect of not waking up at all,_ Jim thought, suppressing the shudder that ran through him at the idea. He had to stop thinking of Blair in terms of Lash's "victims". The kid was alive, and Lash was dead, and that _should_ have been enough to get through to Jim's tired brain.

But somehow, it wasn't.

 

Simon was setting up the inquiry into Lash's shooting for tomorrow, if he could swing it. The captain knew it was justified, but the fact that Jim had pumped five bullets into Lash's chest in the process meant that the inquiry would need to be held. And Simon wanted Jim clear of this case and back on the streets as soon as possible.

But right now, all Jim was concerned with was the kid's well-being, and he found his own strength finally flagging as they let Sandburg drop into bed, fully clothed, and he and Carolyn dropped on the couch, both wiped by the evening's events.

"He'll have to take it easy for a couple of days, but he should be fine," Carolyn told her ex-husband. "Oh, and they just cleaned up the blood around his nipple ring. He'll have to watch that for infection."

Jim nodded dully.

" _You_ okay, Jimmy?" she asked lightly, as Jim dimly noticed her eying the hint of a bruise starting to form on his cheek.

He rubbed absently at another bruise on his stomach. "Yeah," he replied finally, ignoring the tender spots on his back, where he'd landed in the garbage littering the warehouse floor. "Just _really_ tired."

She leaned over to give him a peck on the cheek as she rose. "I'll see you tomorrow, okay?"

Jim nodded, and it wasn't until Carolyn had opened the front door that he spoke. "Hey, Carolyn?"

"Yeah, Jimmy?"

"...Thank you."

She smiled. "Anytime. I'm just amazed you figured out where to find him." Her smile grew. "You should call the Psychic Network. Probably pays better than police work, anyway."

Jim smiled in response. "Right," he replied.

Carolyn looked at him quietly for a moment, before her eyes roamed through the mess that Lash, and later, the forensics team, had left behind. "Clean this place up, Jimmy," she teased. "You'll ruin your reputation."

* * *

As he had cleaned the loft, Jim Ellison had kept his ears open. He'd still been on the alert as he fell asleep at around two, which made it easier to hear the beginnings of it as dawn approached.

His sensitive hearing picked up an increase in the heartbeat that seemed now to define his nights, and he was already out of bed before the mutterings started.

"No," Blair was whispering, a touch of desperation in an angry voice. "No, you can't be me... Only _I_ can be me..."

Jim reached the curtain that had turned his storage room into the kid's bedroom, and pulled it aside slightly, looking at the younger man in concern. Blair was tossing now, trying to pull against bonds that had been released hours earlier.

"Don't... No! ...Jim...?"

The Sentinel's breath caught at the soft, desperate sound of his own name being called, but he still couldn't make himself move forward to stop the nightmare. Something-- _okay,_ he admitted to himself, _hormones_ \--made him just want to stand there and look. Blair really was a beautiful kid--and it was only at times like this, in the wee hours of the morning, that Jim allowed himself to notice.

"Oh, God," Blair muttered, pushing furiously at the sheets around him. "Oh, God. Jim... No..."

 _Okay,_ Jim thought quietly as he moved toward the bed. _Enough of the peep show, Ellison. Time for this to stop._

"Jim? ...Oh, God, Lash... You _bastard!_ " Blair's voice was rising now as tears slid down his horrified face, and Jim crouched by the edge of the bed.

"Blair?" The kid continued thrashing, and didn't respond. Jim raised his own voice. "Sandburg? It's okay... Sandburg?!"

The young, deep blue eyes snapped open, and Blair recoiled as he found Jim's face far too close to his own. He panicked slightly, and winced in pain as he backed away, coming to rest on the far corner of his bed. "Jim? Wha--"

"You were having a nightmare," Jim explained calmly, noting the fact that the kid's first move had been to curl himself into a tight, protective ball. Protecting himself from the world... A world that Jim had introduced him to, the detective thought guiltily. "It's not surprising, I guess."

Blair shook his head as he unwound his body. _Not surprising at all, considering I was sure, as I was losing consciousness last night, that Lash had killed you._ "Guess not." He ran a tired hand through his hair. "Sorry I woke you, man."

Jim shrugged, rising to his feet. "It's no problem, Chief," he said quietly. "You gonna be okay?"

Blair nodded, unsure of the truth of his statement. "Yeah, I'm fine. Sorry, man."

"No problem," Jim returned again. He noticed Blair's nervousness at his closeness, and stood quickly, telling himself _again_ the reasons why he tried not to notice the kid's beauty. It had been years since he actually believed you could turn a straight guy--even one this beautiful--the other way. You might get a quick tumble and a hot fuck, but you'd never get a relationship. "We need to go in tomorrow to fill out the reports on this, but I can drop you here afterward." Blair started to protest, and Jim held up a hand. "You went through a lot tonight, Chief," he said simply. "Just let yourself calm down a little, okay?"

Blair nodded uncertainly. "Okay, man." He looked at the clock and sighed. 4:45 am. "See you in a couple of hours," he snorted, apology in his eyes.

"Get some more sleep before that," Jim ordered gently, as he quit the room.

 _Yeah,_ Blair thought, turning over to curl himself back into a nervous little ball. _Sleep. Right._

* * *

Sandburg had seemed like his old self by morning, and Jim watched the kid look up in interest as Brown approached Jim's desk. The large detective seemed to have been waiting for the partners to finish their reports before coming up to them.

"Hey Hair Boy," Brown greeted the anthropologist jovially. "You okay?"

Blair smiled, and Jim wondered once again at the kid's ability to bounce back. "I'm fine, Brown, thanks."

"Hey, Jimmy!" Jim turned to see Carolyn walking into the bullpen, a teasing smile on her face. "Something's coming on the news that I think you should see."

She gave no explanation, simply walked across the room and switched on the television that had been stationed in the bullpen days ago, so the detectives could monitor the leak that had developed on the Lash case--a leak that Lash himself had engineered.

The report that followed had Jim trying not to blush in embarrassment as the entire bullpen crowded around.

He smiled away Simon's comment about good press, and watched lingeringly as Carolyn walked away, her own teasing comment still floating in the air as she went. _See, Ellison,_ he told himself sharply, _that's the kind of thing you should be going after--not some sweet little--_

"Hey, Jim?" Sandburg broke into his thoughts. The kid had his hands on his knees nervously, and Jim almost smiled at the waves of contained energy that radiated out from the younger man. He tried to shut off the part of his mind that wondered what that nervous energy must do for Blair's love life. That love life didn't include _him,_ and it never would, so why was he wondering?

Blair had begun to speak, and Jim clued back in to him. "...you said I did everything right, did you mean that?"

"Yeah," Jim answered, heading back to his desk. "You kept your head, even though you thought you were going to die."

Blair's head dropped briefly. _In relief?_ Jim wondered. It popped back up again as Jim handed the younger man his coat. "You know, the Chinese believe that when you save a man's life, you become his 'Blessed Protector,' and it's your duty to do that for the rest of your life."

 _God, I'd do it even without the old Chinese belief,_ Jim thought, nodding as he slipped on his jacket, heading for the elevator and a nice quiet lunch. He couldn't seduce the kid, but at least he could enjoy his companionship. _Oh, and speaking of seduction..._ "Really? Well, here's today's rescue. Call Christine. Beg. Crawl. Whatever you have to do."

Blair suddenly looked put-upon. "Yeah, I'm pretty good at that, huh?"

Jim warmed to his subject matter. "Don't ever lie to her," he counseled sagely, his hands coming up to emphasize his point. "Trust. Commitment."

Blair smiled at his partner's antics, wondering again at the detective's strong beauty. "Speaking of commitment... I was thinking about getting a Cascade P.D. insignia tattooed right on my chest."

"Above the nipple ring?" Jim joked.

Blair had a sudden look of... panic? --in his eyes. "How'd you know about that?"

"Let me tell you something," Jim said, a smile wiping away any anger that his words might convey. "You get a tattoo, and your Blessed Protector is going to kick your ass down seven flights to the lobby, okay?"

Blair dodged the stage punch with a laugh, stepping into the elevator with a smile of his own. "Whoa there, Big Guy," he replied, hands up in surrender. "Come on. You really think I'd put something on my body that I couldn't take off? I was just kidding." He tilted his head, thinking, and Jim had to steel himself against the stunning beauty of the action. "Although, an earring would be nice. Something tasteful--maybe a small silver badge?"

Jim laughed as the elevator doors closed. "As long as it isn't too big," he admonished. "You don't want to get a reputation."

Blair snorted at that. "A _reputation?_ For what?"

His partner gave him an enigmatic smile as the elevator let them out in the garage.

* * *

Jim had insisted that Blair get checked out at the hospital--he'd even driven him over there after lunch. The anthropologist was a little annoyed at the gesture at first, but as he sat, thinking over the morning, and the dozens of concerned glances Jim had thrown his way, he realized that something about last night must have really scared the detective.

 _Okay,_ he told himself wryly, _what's not to be scared when a psycho-killer is on the loose, right?_ And that fight--the drop _three flights_ to the warehouse floor--must not have been any cakewalk either... His breath caught involuntarily as he remember his own vague panic as he'd heard the gunshots. He'd been so sure that Jim was dead...

He caught Jim looking at him again, and smiled reassuringly. "Hey, man," he ventured finally. "How's your back?"

Jim shrugged in response, though Blair had caught him shifting uncomfortably a number of times throughout the day. "It's okay, Chief. Nothing a good night's sleep won't cure."

 _Right,_ Blair thought sarcastically. "Last night's kind of hazy, Jim," he said quietly, trying to draw the other man out. "Did the EMTs check you out before we went home?"

Jim tried not to shudder. It was a completely irrational response... But he couldn't forget the moment when Carolyn and the EMTs had started checking _Blair_ out. The bruises that had covered the kid's torso had looked so deep--though they really didn't seem to be causing him any problems now, short of the occasional sharp intake of breath when he moved too fast.

"No, I didn't bother," the detective replied finally, meeting his partner's eyes. "I had other things on my mind."

Blair had meant to say more, but the look in Jim's eyes stopped him. Those piercing blue eyes--

His hand went involuntarily to his chest, where his nipple ring had started aching again. He'd felt it keenly when Lash's fist had connected with the small stainless steel ring, but he hadn't noticed more than a bit of swelling and a dash of blood on it when he got up this morning.

"By the way, Chief," Jim said quietly, face stuck firmly back into a magazine, though he was monitoring his partner's heartbeat closely. "Carolyn said you need to watch that ring for infection for the next couple of weeks. The EMTs thought it was a pretty new piercing, huh?"

Blair flushed. "Um... Yeah."

As Jim looked up, curious to feel such heat coming from the younger man, Blair was saved from any further discussion by the arrival of the nurse, who ushered him into one of the exam rooms, leaving Jim with a question still hanging on his lips.

* * *

> He stepped forward, heading toward the purple-curtained area, watching the black-haired head of the man walking ahead of him.
> 
> "Just sit down, please," the man said, his voice lilting and Eastern, his back still turned as he fussed with the needles and the stainless steel ring. "And take your shirt off."
> 
> Blair turned to look at the old barber's chair, and froze. Something wasn't right here. Something _really_ wasn't right... The chair reminded him of something...
> 
> "Please, Blair," the man said, still turned away, as he reached out a hand to push Blair into the seat. "I'll be with you in just a moment."
> 
> The anthropologist wanted to get up, but he suddenly found his arms and legs shackled to the chair. As the dark-haired man turned, Blair already knew who he'd find.
> 
> "It's hairy Blairy," Lash said, his voice his own now--and high and hysterical. Blair struggled, trying to get out--trying to get away from the needles that he knew were coming.
> 
> "Don't, man," he begged, watching as Lash got ever closer, a small, straight needle in his hand. No clamp now, to hold the bud in place... Just the promise of pain.
> 
> "Okay," Lash told him, his voice now that of a soft-spoken Pakistani. "Now there will be a little pain now."
> 
> "Little" didn't cover it, and Blair bit his tongue to keep from crying out.
> 
> "And a little bit more."
> 
> "No," Blair whimpered, watching in horror as the larger, hollow needle descended. "No, man... _Please!_ "
> 
> The next pain shook him from head to foot, and he lay there amazed that he hadn't blacked out. Or maybe he _had_... He felt the ring being slipped neatly in after the needle, and finally managed to force his eyes back down to stare at the fresh wound.
> 
> He'd picked a blue bead. He knew he had. It had to be as blue as Jim's eyes--as blue as the sky in Big Sur...
> 
> But the gem on his chest was a blood red--and the shine of it matched the blood that surrounded it.
> 
> _No,_ he thought in panic. _No! This was all wrong! This was supposed to be_ Jim's _ring! It wasn't supposed to be--_
> 
> "Now, you're going to have to take a nice... Take a nice h-hot bath..."

* * *

"No!" The cry wasn't shouted, but Jim was at Blair's bedroom doorway in seconds anyway. Another night, another nightmare. He began to wonder, as he pushed the curtain aside, whether he shouldn't have Sandburg go and see the department shrink. Two weeks of nightmares was more than enough, surely.

"Sandburg?" He stayed standing now, far enough away from his partner that he wouldn't terrify him again. A couple of nights of that had been sufficient to teach him a lesson. "Sandburg? Come on, Blair. Wake up."

Blair's eyes shot open again, and a hand went immediately to his chest. He hissed involuntarily as he pulled up his shirt, frantically getting a look at the nipple ring.

 _It was blue... It was blue..._ He sighed in relief, and lay back, his shirt still hiked up under his arms. Only then did he seem to recognise that Jim was in the room at all. He moved to pull his shirt down again, but Jim sat on the edge of the bed, stopping him.

"Let me take a look at it," the detective said quietly, assuming that Blair had felt some sort of pain as he woke. He put a very careful hand to the younger man's nipple, and felt as well as heard Blair's heart as it skipped.

The nipple was dark, swollen... The area around the ring had been bleeding again. Jim sighed, and looked up into his partner's eyes. "You didn't notice that you have one hell of an infection brewing here?" he asked gently.

Blair nodded, swallowing hard. He had never planned to let Jim even know the ring was there, much less to have the older man touch it with such tenderness. "It's... It's fine, Jim," he stammered quickly. "I, uh, started putting some Bactine on it yesterday."

"Looks like you might be a little late--as usual," Jim teased. But something was bothering Blair--something more than just the dream. The Sentinel detected the racing of his partner's heart... And a scent that he couldn't quite place...

"You should go to the doctor," he suggested calmly. "See if you can get some antibiotics for it."

"No, man," Blair insisted, trying to pull down his shirt again. "It'll be fine. Just give it a few days."

Jim's hand still lay on his partner's chest, preventing Blair from covering himself up, as the detective finally realized what the scent was... He hoped he knew now what was bothering his loftmate... And his mind rolled, trying to figure out how to make Blair see that the worry wasn't necessary.

And that his _own_ wasn't necessary, either.

"Hey... Jim? Man, you wanna let me get dressed?" Blair asked wryly.

Jim's hand didn't move. He let himself just sit there for a moment, feeling the beat of his partner's heart through the slightly flushed skin. He focused on the bead in Blair's nipple ring. "Nice color."

Blair had no idea what he was referring to. "What, man?"

Jim's eyes came up, and Blair felt his breath catch. "The bead," Jim explained quietly, smiling at his partner's response. "Nice color."

Blair smiled in embarrassment. "Oh, yeah..."

"Why would you get something like that?"

The younger man squirmed slightly, and Jim reveled at the feel of the movement under his hand, as he sensed another jump in Blair's temperature. "If I told you, I'd have to kill you," Blair answered, laughing weakly. He cleared his throat as he saw Jim studying the ring more closely.

"No, really," Jim asked quietly. "It looks like it would hurt."

"Of course it hurts, man," Blair replied, trying to sound more like himself. "Pain is a good way of locking a memory in place, you know?"

"Like knowing exactly how old you were when you fell out of a tree and broke your arm..." Jim whispered, too quietly for Blair to hear. He looked up at his partner. "This one's new. What's it supposed to make you remember?"

Blair turned beet red, and his breath caught in near panic. He fought it down, and tried to answer normally. "Nothing big," he said finally, smiling. "Just... matches my eyes, you know?"

 _No it doesn't,_ Jim thought warmly. _Your eyes are like mountain skies. They're deep and rich... They're not that washed out, cold blue. It doesn't match your eyes at all, Blair,_ he mused. _But it does match mine._

He stood, reluctantly withdrawing his hand from Blair's chest and watching as the kid started to pull his shirt down again. Jim laid a hand now on his partner's belly, enjoying the mild shock that went through his own system at the touch. "Just stay put, Chief," he whispered gently. "I want to take care of that."

 

Blair tried to remember to breathe as Jim headed across the hall to the bathroom. Oh, GOD! _No,_ he told himself sharply. _No, this is not happening. It's a dream, right? Yeah, that's it. It's a dream, and I'm going to wake up, and it'll be morning, and Jim will be his same old straight self and I'll just have to suck it up (Shit! Stop the puns, brain!) and deal with the fact that..._

Jim was back, the first aid kit in his hands. His fingers, as they cleaned Blair's nipple and carefully rubbed salve into the infection, were so tender that Blair felt his heart skip a beat.

 

Jim felt it too, and he smiled. He wanted that smile to convey all the things he felt about this beautiful young man, and as he caught the scent of Blair's growing arousal, he knew that it had.

"Let me just put a bandage on that," Jim whispered huskily, turning the simple act of bandaging a wound into the most delicious foreplay he could manage. He felt Blair responding to it--felt the rise in his temperature, the increase in his heart rate. It astonished him that these senses could tell him so much about his partner's reactions.

 

"Thanks, man," Blair said after a moment, reaching up _again_ to pull down his shirt. _God,_ he thought, _if this is a dream, could you arrange for me to have it often?_

But, excited as he was, he wanted Jim to leave now. He wanted the dream to be over--just for the time being. Because if he looked up into those eyes again, he was going to say the one thing he couldn't say, and the whole world was going to come crashing down around him.

"Thanks," he whispered. "Sorry I woke you up."

 

Jim smiled again, though Blair was too busy trying to use his eyes to bore a hole in the wall to notice. The larger man leaned over with infinite tenderness, and lightly kissed the tape on Blair's bandage. "All better," he breathed, feeling his partner shudder beneath him.

 _Okay,_ Blair thought, _this is_ so _not happening!_ How could it? Jim didn't want him--God, he'd done that whole little rigmarole at the station two weeks ago about "trust" and "commitment" and how Blair should just crawl on back to Christine like a good little boy.

 _God,_ he thought desperately. _Please let this be happening._

And suddenly, he knew it was. Jim murmured something about checking out Blair's other nipple--just to make sure--and the softest, most perfectly sensual lips were locked on to Blair's naked flesh, sucking and teasing and making him hard... He gasped, putting a disbelieving hand at the back of Jim's head.

"Jim?"

The detective looked up, hooded eyes filled with mirth, and lust... and-- _please God,_ Blair begged, _let me be right_ \--and love. "Yeah, Chief?"

"Could you, um..." His blush reached halfway down his chest, and he melted as Jim let out a soft, loving chuckle that thrummed through both of them. "Could you check around a little more," he finally asked, need making him bold, and love making him silly. "See, I figure you could maybe... Well, it's just that you're..."

Jim ran his tongue gently down to Blair's navel, feeling the thrill go through his partner. "More... aware?" he asked finally. "I mean, I'm certainly not more sensitive--" He had to laugh again, as just the movement of his breath against the trail his tongue had left was enough to make his friend arch his back in pleasure. "I think _you_ have that corner of the market."

Blair growled low in his throat, pulling away and around, so that Jim found himself suddenly on his back. He looked up as Blair slid down, so that their faces were on an even level. "How'd you do that?" he asked, stunned in the most wonderful way he could have imagined.

His partner gave him a long lingering kiss that promised anything the older man wanted. Not just that Blair would give it to him, but that he _could_... Anything...

"Maybe you're not the one whose more aware, Jim."

* * *

_The End_

FANDOM: Sentinel  
RATING: PG  
ORIENTATION: Slash  
EPISODE TIE-IN: Cypher 


End file.
